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Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

justin.searls.co

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Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#101

Post by bradly »

dmurray wrote: post #99
bradly wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I just don’t read that post and think, this is an unbiased take by someone reserving judgment.

Well, let's say he's clearly not taking Arko's side but he's reserving judgment on whether Ruby Central did a reasonable thing or whether it's "a plague on both your houses".

I think what bumps me is the reserving judgment bit. Why? And until when? Is there an exception that some revelation from Ruby Central or Shopify is going to be released that will clarify all of this? We have actions that have happened and we can form opinions based on those right now.

Given Shopify's strong internal culture of "Strong Opinions, Weakly Held" I feel comfortable holding them accountable to that same standard.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#102

Post by hobs »

konnor wrote: post #88
renewiltord wrote: post #41

I wonder if there's a term for this kind of thing where people use the word "including". As an example, I might have a non-profit that serves soup at soup kitchens and also pays me to manage it. If someone gives $100k, suppose I pay myself $90k and use $10k to serve soup. When someone threatens to cut the contribution, I say "This will affect the non-profit's mission since the $100k a year goes to critical things lik…

Boy do I have something to tell you about a lot of non-profits...Take Susan G. Komen with breast cancer research... https://theappalachianonline.com/problems-susan-g-komen/ > In the organization’s 2010-2011 financial report it was revealed that Susan G. Komen only devotes 20.9 percent of the donations it receives to researching breast cancer.

My favorite one is that St Jude has 80 beds. 50% of their funding goes to fundraising or reserves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Jude_Children%27s_Research...

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#103

Post by em-bee »

BrenBarn wrote: post #83

This is tangential to the main point of the article, but the anecdote about the dongle is interesting to me. The author's point seems to be that it was disturbing that Andre joked that being reimbursed for a new dongle (and/or meals) was no big deal. It seems to me there are three potential aspects to this: 1. Being reimbursed for a new dongle (and/or meals) 2. Joking about how that is no big deal 3. Not being transp…

i don't think #3 should be an issue either. buying a new dongle is a business expense. which means it should be paid from an account that is not taxed for those expenses, which i think is easier if you don't pay it from your salary. that's what i do with my company too. the extend that he benefits from that is effectively an increase in compensation, and so the only remaining question is, is the compensation fair or not.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#104

Post by GreenWatermelon »

hitekker wrote: post #60
its-summertime wrote: post #8

This seems to be mostly "I dislike Andre" and not really about the current events? I think a total of half a paragraph is about current events in any form.

If you read more closely, the article notes potential malfeasance and cites receipts https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-gemserve... > Later, in August 2017, Andre accused Google Cloud Platform of wholesale copying gemstash's codebase, going so far as to threaten legal action in his opening message. He juxtaposed the accusation with the complaint that Google had, "repeatedly declined to support Ruby T…

And he completely apologized when it turned out he was wrong and made a hasty judgement, 5 hours later.

And a single instance of something is hardly a pattern.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#105

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #68
pizlonator wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400k/yr is excessive?

"Excessive" is obviously a subjective measurement. At times I don't think that HN's median audience appreciates that a 400k/yr salary is objectively extremely high, even for software engineers, even in 2025. A "mere" $367K/yr total compensation puts you in the 90th percentile of SWE earnings. I know Google, Facebook, and a few others greatly exceed that in total compensation at their higher SWE levels, but they're pr…

it's really important to not compare freelance and W2 salaries directly. freelance gets 10% off the top immediately for social security and Medicare taxes that employers usually pay. next is your health insurance which will eat another couple thousand a year. then you have to remember that as freelance you don't get paid for vacation and sick time, so there goes another ~10%. also, you're not getting paid for all the hours. if you spend a day without work to do as a freelance, you don't get payed for it. $200 an hour is still a good salary, but it's not $400k a year. it's probably closer to $250k

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#106

Post by satvikpendem »

999900000999 wrote: post #48
satvikpendem wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting to get paid for open source work is like expecting that people don't pay you for cookies they take from your store labeled "Free Cookies."

But if you take my cookies, add sprinkles then resell them, I can expect a modest donation to keep the bakery running. Otherwise I'm going to run out of flour and no one gets cookies. This is the original sin of FOSS. Large mega corps end up taking up a disproportionate amount of bandwidth while only contributing when they feel like it. At least with . net core Microsoft ultimately pays the bills. No one knows how ot…

Why would you expect that when you literally give them away for free, often with the explicit text of, do whatever you want with them?

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#107

Post by jrflowers »

I love this article because “I am completely neutral on this topic, anyway totally unrelated I met a guy once and kind of thought he was a dick, here is a decade+ worth of stories and rumors about him that I’ve had catalogued and ready to go” is a genuinely hilarious format for a post. It is so catty, like the dude could’ve just wrote “fuck that Andre guy. Choke on deez nuts!” and it would have the same amount of information value about whatever is going on with Ruby.

10/10 I thoroughly enjoyed that the author saw some confusion about the structure of Ruby and thought “Time to bust out The Many Crimes of Andre.xlsx”

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#108

Post by its-summertime »

rubynerd wrote: post #59
its-summertime wrote: post #8

This seems to be mostly "I dislike Andre" and not really about the current events? I think a total of half a paragraph is about current events in any form.

I can see how you're coming away from this article with that perception, but, this needs to be read in the context of everything said prior: its intent isn't to provide you a full narrative of the situation, just additional context. This article is the missing piece explaining why: 1. Shopify, allegedly, "specifically demanded that at least one of the RubyGems maintainers, André Arko, be excluded from returning to th…

It isn't explaining why Shopify finds André to be a risk, its explaining why Justin Searls finds André to be a risk.

> but I wouldn't expect either Shopify or a member of Rails Core to have such concerns simply because they don't like someone.

Being given authority doesn't result in a person being given the ability to be reasonable. Of Rails, there is several years of controversy of how one notable member presents his concerns and who he targets with his concerns.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#110

Post by renewiltord »

afandian wrote: post #58
renewiltord wrote: post #41

I wonder if there's a term for this kind of thing where people use the word "including". As an example, I might have a non-profit that serves soup at soup kitchens and also pays me to manage it. If someone gives $100k, suppose I pay myself $90k and use $10k to serve soup. When someone threatens to cut the contribution, I say "This will affect the non-profit's mission since the $100k a year goes to critical things lik…

I know what you’re getting at. I think you’d call it a type of ‘lie of omission’. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lying_by_omission But also with some elements of ‘category error’ https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Category_mistake

I was thinking it's Lying by Omission but that seemed to not be specific enough to this specific style of omission. Ah well, it will have to suffice unless we can think of something sufficiently pithy.
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